What was your childhood bedroom like?

I always shared a bedroom with Sheila, in Glasgow, In Whitley Bay and in Beckenham, until Sheila left home and went to Nursing School. I don’t remember anything about my bedroom in Scotland except having my ‘Lambie’ in my bed. He got lost somewhere along the way even before we moved to England I think. I do remember lying awake ( yes, even then it took me a while to get to sleep) but hearing my heartbeat in my ears and thinking it was the sound of someone climbing the stairs up to our flat, the more it scared me the faster the steps!

Our bedroom in Whitley Bay was at the back of the house, it was big enough for our twin beds and a wardrobe with a small desk between the beds where we used to keep treasures and have our ’nature table'. My earliet memory is of being tucked up in bed and watching the firelight flickering around the room from the open fireplace, on the first night we moved into the house from Glasgow. It was January 1952 and the house was freezing cold, Mum had made fires downstairs and brought a shovelful of burning embers up to the bedroom to try and warm it up.

My only other memories are of the curtains which were made new for the room a print of nasturtiums and were lovely sunny colours. I remember lying in bed and looking at the sunlight through them when I was sick with something that children don’t get these days… measles? mumps? I do remember that when looking out of the window we could see into the back garden of the house on the next street and that it was totally overgrown, a complete wilderness.

It didn’t ever seem to surprise me as the house belonged to a Mrs Margai, the wife of Milton Margai, the Prime Minister of Sierra Leone. I thought he would probably be very used to jungle and that that was quite in keeping. I don’t think I ever saw him, but there was talk of a very black man….. I know they both went to the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth in 1953.

We moved to Beckenham in 1959 and Sheila and I again shared a bedroom at the back of the house, overlooking the garden. It was much more spacious, the whole house was, my Mum loved that house and garden, it really was a dream house for her. We had room for our twin beds, well separated, a bookcase, wardrobe, our rocker and the sewing machine and I was allowed to choose wallpaper, curtains and new fitted carpet at one point. I picked a pretty floral paper and pulled out a soft green for curtains and a lavender colour for the carpet, I chose white candlewick bedspreads andI thought it was all very chic.

All that aside, the bedroms were very cold in winter and I remember heaps of blankets and feather quilts and still my breath condensing on the air. That bedroom did have a gas fire which I used to stretch out in front of and spread all my books when I was studying for exams. Nothing else of note!